Happy New Year and welcome to 2018! The last few years I’ve published blog posts with recommendations on annual Marketo housekeeping. This year is no different, because it is critical to do a thorough clean-up annually to ensure that your Marketo instance is running at optimal performance!

All of my previous recommendations remain relevant and are highly recommended. You can read more about these housekeeping tips here. For now, I’d like to highlight some new Housekeeping tips that will help reduce the clutter, keep your instance running smoothly, and ensure that you make a good first impression every time.

Clean Up Your Database:
Your marketing is only as good as your data, and having bad data will limit your ability to deliver effective marketing strategies—in the end, that will cost you money.

That said, the new year is a good time to analyze your database for marketability, inactivity, accuracy, and audience groupings. Take some time to run smart lists to review the following categories:

Duplicate records

Leads that have been inactive for 15 + months

Unsubscribes

Missing and hard bounced emails

Competitors and other undesirable groups

Marketing Suspended and Blacklisted

Review the leads that fall into these categories and develop a clean up/purge plan. You can easily purge specific leads such as Unsubscribes because of Marketo’s Durable Unsubscribe, while other audiences may need more strategy.

Doing this annually will help reduce your risk of being caught by a spam trap and keep your database clean and compliant with your Marketo limits.

SSL Certification to Secure your Marketo Landing Pages:
If you have not done so already, the new year may be a good time to convert your Marketo instance to a secure server. There are many reasons to have secure landing pages, but I’d like to highlight a few:

Starting in October of 2017, Google Chrome began to flag insecure pages (http instead of https) that have forms. When a user begins filling out any kind of form field, including name, phone number, or even search boxes on the page, a warning will appear in the address bar.

It is expected that eventually all web browsers will identify all insecure pages, even pages without forms.

Referrer information is not transferred from secure to insecure pages. If a new person clicks a link to go to your landing page from a secure site, you will not have all the referrer information available in Marketo.

First impressions are critical when introducing your brand to new prospects. You don’t want your brand to be perceived as a security risk. This will affect conversion rates and decrease the ROI of your marketing initiatives. Now is the time to consider transitioning your Marketo LPs.

Optimize Global System Processes:
There are many global processes that need to be revisited regularly to ensure that they still align with your evolving business needs. A few good examples would include Scoring, Lifecycle, Channels and Tags, etc. Now would be a good time to analyze the effectiveness of these global processes.

When doing this, include all stakeholders who can provide honest feedback. Ask questions about the quality of MQLs to gauge the effectiveness of your Scoring strategy. Discuss any changes to the sales process and/or milestones that may need to be accommodated for in your Lifecycle strategy. Take a look at your 2018 Marketing Plan to determine if the current Channels and Tags will effectively meet your needs for the upcoming year. Taking the time to do this now will set the stage for successful 2018 reporting.

Review/Revise Content Used in Nurture Campaigns:
If you have evergreen engagement programs that remain active year after year it is important to refresh the content periodically. What are you waiting for? Quickly audit your nurture content to ensure that it is still relevant and available. You may need to update:

Email and/or LP Content that specifically refers to 2017

Whitepapers or web content links that are no longer available

Emails that are not performing well that may need to be replaced or refreshed

Introduce new content to re-engage or continue to engage with your audience

The benefits of a little Marketo housekeeping will keep rewarding you all year. You’ll be able to find things easier, your Marketing Activities will look cleaner, you’ll increase your database integrity, you’ll make a good impression to new prospects, and your life will be easier!